The present invention relates to a method of automatically handling cash in an office or a branch of a financial institute, and in particular, to a method of operating offices of financial or banking institutes in which a window counter can be efficiently used in a period of time other than office hours of the window.
In general, an automatic handling of cash or cash transactions in an office of a conventional financial or banking facility is carried out in a particular place (so called an automatic banking machine corner) in the office. The corner is disposed separate, with respect to a place (a counter lobby) of the office, for dedicately handling cash transactions in an automatic fashion. Furthermore, a method in which to improve services for users, a window lobby is disposed in the proximity of an automatic banking machine corner for the user to conduct a cash transaction has been described in JP-A-62-79568, for example.
In accordance with the methods of handling cash in the prior art, a place (a counter lobby) of the office is in any case completely separated from a particular place (an automatic banking machine corner) for dedicately handling cash transactions in an automatic manner. Namely, when the counter of the banking office is closed, the window lobby of the office is separated from the particular place, namely, the automatic banking machine corner by use of a shutter for prevention of crime, thereby enabling the user to handle cash transactions in an automatic fashion.
In accordance with the conventional technology above, when the counter is closed in the office, the lobby of the window is separated from the automatic banking machine corner by means of the shutter, thereby enabling the cash transactions to be carried out in a period of time other than the office hours of the window. However, recently, the usage of automatic cash handling in the period of time after the office is closed has been increasing. In this situation, according to the method of the prior art, there arise problems in the improvement of the service for the user, namely, the users are forced to form a queue waiting for the automatic cash handling, for example. In order to solve the problem, an improvement of the automatic cash handling machine has been achieved such that a period of time necessary for each automatic cash transaction processing time is reduced. However, a method in which the space allocated of the automatic banking machine corner is expanded to install an increased number of automatic banking machines cannot be easily implemented because of a limitation of the space allocated to the office.